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Hubert Keller

One of the many treats my brother and I looked forward to during the Christmas holidays was having a freshly baked _petit bonhomme_ for breakfast or for an afternoon snack. The breads seemed to have a best friend, too: hot chocolate. Still today shop windows display the _petits bonhommes_ in sizes ranging from seven or eight inches to several feet high. Some families buy a large bread to put in the middle of the holiday breakfast table. My father made his _petits bonhommes_ from brioche but tells me they can also be made from the kugelhopf dough.

For this use, the pastry cream needs to be thicker and tighter so that it bakes up like a custard. It has extra yolks and a little extra cornstarch to accomplish this. Plus, as my brother explained when he visited San Francisco in 2011, the pastry cream should be warm when it is piped into the [bretzels](/recipes/food/views/51125410) . Make it right before you shape your bretzels and, whatever you do, do not stir the cream to loosen it before transferring it to a pastry bag. This will break the cream and it will not bake properly. For convenience, I've included a complete ingredient list; follow the preceding method. But once it is made, keep the pastry cream in the saucepan or transfer it to a bowl. This will help it stay warm until you need it.

Under all the whipped cream icing of the Black Forest cake are three layers of chocolate génoise soaked in kirsch. My father finished his génoise by hand, using a huge whisk with widely spaced wires to fold the flour and then the butter into the batter with big, efficient strokes so it would not deflate. On a daily basis, he would grab one of us kids to help. He sifted the flour, cocoa, and salt onto a sheet of parchment paper. When he was ready, my brother or I would hold the parchment paper folded above the bowl and tap the flour over the batter while Dad folded it in, telling us to tap faster or slower. As with many fancy cakes, the assembly is easy; it just takes lots of words to describe.
Once you have baked the cake, you have completed the part that needs the greatest attention. The cakes flavor develops as the kirsch soaks into the layers. Give the finished cake a minimum of four hours in the refrigerator before serving, but its even better made a whole day in advance. My recipe uses home-preserved sour cherries. But if you want to make this cake and did not start in June during cherry season, you still have plenty of options. You can use fresh or frozen fruit or shop for jars of preserved sour cherries such as morello and amarena cherries. Depending on what you find, the syrup will contain more or less sugar, so be sure to taste first and adjust your ingredients accordingly. (See the Note on the next page for details on substitutions.) A good Black Forest cake should be very moist and have a distinct kirsch flavor. So be sure to use good-quality kirsch.

When sour cherries (_griottes_ in French) were in season, my father would preserve them in eau-de-vie for his [Black Forest Cake génoise](/recipes/food/views/51125600) . The syrup moistened the génoise, and the cherries went into the filling. My brother and I would eat the cherries until we got a buzz. Before freezers, the only way to preserve the fruit cops would be to make jams, jellies, these fruits preserved in alcohol, and eau-de-vie. Alsace is famous for its eau-de-vie as well as for its cherries, plums, and pears. It was natural to do these cherries at home and pull out a jar for special occasions. We usually do not pit cherries even when baking or using them for preserves such as these, so be sure to tell your guests about the pits. If you do pit the cherries, the alcohol penetrates them more quickly. But they hold their shape better if not pitted. Serve the cherries on their own as a treat with after-dinner coffee or over ice cream.

This is the stew that made such an impression on the final episode of the first season of _Top Chef Masters_. Each of us had been asked to create a meal that would be an autobiography told through the dishes we would present to the judges. I immediately thought of _baeckeoffe_ ("baker's oven"). The name refers back to the time when bakers used wood-fired ovens. After the bread was done, this dish would be baked long and slow in the falling temperatures of the cooling oven. Since everyone in town would see the baker every day for the family's daily loaf, each would often bring a casserole to be baked in the oven. It was traditional, particularly on Mondays, when the women went to the river to do their laundry. They would have marinated their meats and vegetables overnight, dropped their casseroles off in the morning on their way, and then picked them upplus a loaf of breadon their way home. Even though my father was not the bread baker and had a modern, gasfired oven, people still took their casseroles to him. They liked to drop in because he always had some joke or story to tell. Before the village baker also invested in a modern oven and was still using wood, when my father turned over a fresh loaf of bread to give it the traditional blessing, he would sometimes see pieces of charcoal embedded in the crust. That would send my dad wild, muttering that "he [the baker] did not thoroughly clean his oven!"
I make this dish often, both at home and at the restaurant. But these days we tend to increase the vegetables and use less meat, and sometimes we use only vegetables and leave out the meat entirely. While there is never a mushroom in the classic recipe, you can add them or make a vegetarian version with mushrooms and a rich vegetable stock. I've also made this stew as the centerpiece for Christmas dinner, adding plenty of sliced black truffles. The classic dish uses a mix of meats including a pig's foot, which gives a rich, gelatinous texture to the stew. You may be able to special-order a pig's foot. Ask the butcher to slice it crosswise into three pieces. But even at the restaurant I sometimes have trouble ordering them, and your stew will still be delicious without one. You can also use just one or two kinds of meat instead of all three.

For my first two months in the army I was based outside Toul. In the town was a pâtisserie that made the best brioche with pastry cream. I would go to the shop whenever I could. The baker spread pastry cream over the dough, and then rolled it up like a biscuit rolé (jelly roll). My father made a brioche-and-pastrycream roll, too, but shaped it like a bretzel. Chantal still remembers them from the first time I brought her home to meet my parents—to do that you had to be serious. When I told my father I planned to put them in this book, he was so pleased.